It is very curious to look at the patent illustration and not pick up on the inventors intention. I was going to post this 1911 Victor patent with the other posting of "Duck Web" gloves and read the document more closely and realized the inventor, Burt Rogers was describing the so called "Pita Pocket" glove. Rogers intended a flap of leather attached loosely to the face of a fielders glove (cross section of fig. 3) so said glove could function as a catchers mitt if needed. This flap of leather was to be attached at the heel and up the pinky and thumb with sewing or lacing and left loose up to the fingertips where each finger and thumb had a point of attachment. The reasoning was to leave the fingers with some room for movement and flexibility. There was some mention also of the attachments being manufactured so the leather flap could be removed and replaced if needed.

Glove below from http://www.baseballglovecollector.com Not sure if this is a Victor glove since no markings are evident, but it looks like the fingertip attachment points are crimped split rivets which could be removed as per the patent description. With gloves this old and un-marked, it is kind of a guess

The glove below has a similar look but the fingertip attachment points seem to be crimped metal grommets.

Yeah, I got a little sideways on this one. The Pita Pocket style glove was a Ted Kennedy invention. The Burt Rogers patent drawing refers to an invention from Victor Sporting Goods. They called it the glove/mitt. it was a combination of a glove pattern on the back with a mitt leather facing. The front facing was attached at the perimeter and bridged the finger stalls. The front facing was loose in the center and is why many of the examples in the hobby are heavily creased on the front. Burt Rogers designed it that way so the finger stalls would stay flexible and the facing would have a lot of give to it.

There was another key glove design patented on the same day as the Victor glove/mitt above. This was the Frederick Ratsch patent of his "Duk Fut Web" glove. Both the Victor and Ratsch designs were patented Jan. 3, 1911. The main difference between the two glove designs was the loose fitting front panel of the Victor design versus the heavily sewn-in construction of the Ratsch design. The Ratsch design essentially created integral webs between the thumb and fingers. The Ratsch patent objective was to form a glove that would provide individual finger webs to contain a ball from glancing off or between the fingers.

One thing you notice on the Ratsch glove pic above is the one piece front. A duk fut web glove recently on ebay had a thumb seam on the front. Kind of an anomaly. Was it a Ratsch patented model or something else? It carried a Simmons tag but Simmons was just the retailer.

Looking closely at the back of the glove showed some telltale stitching. Looking through the other duk fut web models at http://www.baseballglovecollector.com I spied another Simmons duk fut model with the thumb seam. I owned this puppy for a while. The webs had been cut out some time ago . There was an extra tag on the back. Here are the back of the ebay model and JD's website model side by side.

The tag displayed a patent number: 980560. That is the Ratsch patent. This doesn't explain why the thumb seam was present. Did Ratsch make various models of the duk fut design?

Last edited by mikesglove on March 18th, 2020, 5:04 pm, edited 1 time in total.

So I wonder what's up with the Thumb seam present on the Simmons web finger glove and why is a Ratsch patent info on the back of the Simmons glove when it is clearly not A Ratsch design? There is another web finger patent design from a manufacturer in the later part of 1911. That would be the Rawlings "Sure Catch" patent of Aug. 1911. Notice the Rawlings patent includes a thumb seam on the front.

Last edited by mikesglove on March 18th, 2020, 4:52 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Here is a comparison of the Ratsch patent and the Rawlings. The top drawing shows the face pattern of the Ratsch glove and the bottom drawing is the face pattern of the Rawlings. You can see they are radically different. The Ratsch face pattern is simple stitched with a seam along the pinky and thumb. The Rawlings face pattern not only leaves a hole for the thumb seam but also allows for the leather face to wrap around and attach to the back of the pinky and thumb stall.

Below are some examples. You can clearly see the perimeter seams of this Ratsch glove below

The Rawlings "Sure Catch" glove below clearly shows the perimeter seams wrapping around to the back of the glove.

The Simmons glove seems to share all of the characteristics of the Rawlings glove.

It seems obvious to me that Rawlings supplied the web finger glove to Simmons Hardware. Even though Rawlings had a web finger patent, it is perplexing why the Simmons glove would need to included the Ratsch web finger patent license cloth patch on the back. I'd love to see a Rawlings catalog from 1912-1918 to see more info on their web finger "Sure Catch" model. It may provide some clarity. Unfortunately, no catalogs have surfaced to date.